The only other convention I've been to was Anime Reactor (also in Illinois) a few years ago, which was tiny tiny tiny, especially compared to Anime Central, supposedly the largest anime con in the Midwest. There were a lot of people, as always, but more surprisingly Artists' Alley was the biggest I've ever seen it - I heard there were over 200 artists/studio in the Alley this year. The dealers' room has been expanding its offerings lately to some other general geeky stuff (there was a booth for the Bristol Renaissance Faire, and there were a few places selling steampunk-themed goods), but otherwise, having been going to ACen since 2005 and having since learned about other ways of getting certain goods (eBay, Yahoo!Japan auctions, garagesalejapan on LJ), I wasn't overly impressed with the dealers' room.

Panels weren't as interesting this year either, to me. There was one about fanfiction that I sort of wanted to go to for the lulz, but it conflicted with Whose Line Is It Anime. WLIIA was still awesome, but not as awesome as previous years. I also went to a Gintama cosplay meetup and panel that was pretty fun.